BRECKINRIDGE  AND  LANE  CAMPAIGN  DOCUMENT,  NO.  13. 


THE  DOCTRINES  AND  POLICY 

OF  THE 

REPUBLICAN  PARTY, 

AS  GIVEN  BY  ITS  RECOGNIZED  LEADERS,  ORATORS, 

PRESSES,  AND  PLATFORMS. 


“OUT  OF  THINE  OWN  MOUTH  WILL  I  CONDEMN  THEE.*' 


We  propose,  to  give  as  fully  as  our  limits  will  allow,  the  sentiments  and  policy 
of  the  leading  Republicans  now  supporting  Abraham  Lincoln  for  the  Presidency. 
We  charge  upon  these  men  a  systematic  effort  to  excite  the  hostility  of  the  North 
towards  the  South,  to  inflame  the  citizens  of  both  to  mutual  hatred  and  variance, 
by  the  most  galling  and  offensive  language  they  can  employ  in  reference  to  the 
South ;  and  then,  by  creating  a  feeling  incompatible  with  the  Union,  to  bring 
about  its  final  overthrow.  We  charge  upon  them  a  reckless  disregard  of  the  Con¬ 
stitution,  a  studied  contempt  for  the  judicial  tribunals,  and  the  utterance  of  dog¬ 
mas  which  are  calculated  to  incite  insurrection  among  the  slaves,  and  to  result  in 
all  the  horrors  of  a  servile  war.  We  charge  upon  them  the  well-known  fact  that 
these  teachings  and  this  agitation,  begun  for  the  basest  purposes,  have  already 
realized  at  Harper's  Ferry  a  successful  result  in  the  murder  of  peaceful  and  unof¬ 
fending  citizens ;  and  that  this  midnight  massacre  of  slaveholders,  and  attempted 
servile  revolt,  so  far  from  exciting  abhorrence  and  condemnation  from  this  party, 
has  elicited  warm  sympathy  for  the  guilty  actors,  who  were  selected  to  give  a 
practical  illustration  of  their  doctrines. 

We  ask  you,  fellow-citizens,  if  this  work  is  to  be  permitted  to  go  on  ?  We  urge 
you  to  read  carefully  the  extracts  which  we  annex,  showing  the  aims  and  designs 
of  the  leading  Republicans,  and  to  consider  whether  such  a  party  of  sectional  hate 
and  intolerance  may  be  permitted  with  safety  to  control  our  institutions,  or  to  be 
allowed  to  grasp  the  reins  of  government  of  our  Federal  Union. 

We  quote  first  from  Seward,  because  he  is  the  real  leader  and  soul  of  the  Re¬ 
publican  party,  as  he  was  the  first  to  build  up  and  promote  this  sectional  organiza¬ 
tion.  Hear  the  man  who  received  173  votes  at  the  Chicago  Convention,  and  who 
would  have  been  nominated  but  for  the  private  malice  of  Greely.  At  Cleveland, 
in  1848,  he  said  : 

“  Slavery  can  be  limited  to  its  present  bounds;  it  can  be  ameliorated.  It  can  be,  and 
it  must  be,  ABOLISHED,  and  you  and  I  can  and  must  do  it.  The  task  is  as  simple  and 
easy  as  its  consummation  will  be  beneficent,  and  its  rewards  glorious.  It  requires  only  to 
follow  this  simple  rule  of  action  :  to  do  everywhere  and  on  every  occasion  what  we  can, 
and  not  to  neglect  or  refuse  to  do  what  we  can,  at  any  time,  because  at  that  precise  time, 
and  on  that  particular  occasion,  we  cannot  do  more.  Circumstances  determine  possibilities.” 

*  *  *  “  Extend  a  cordial  welcome  to  the  fugitive  who  lays  his  weary  limbs  at 

your  door,  and  defend  him  as  you  would  your  paternal  gods.” 

“Correct  your  own  error  that  slavery  has  any  constitutional  guarantee  which  may  not 
be  released,  and  ought  not  to  be  relinquished.”  *  *  “  You  will  soon  bring  the  parties 

of  the  country  into  an  effective  aggression  upon  slavery.” 

WASHINGTON  CITY — Issued  by  the  National  Democratic  Executive  Committee,  1860. 


9 


Not  content  with  thus  denying  the  existence  of  u  any  constitutional  guaran¬ 
tee”  to  slavery;  not  satisfied  with  thus  advising  a  forcible  resistance  to  the  recla¬ 
mation  of  fugitive  slaves  in  defiance  of  the  Constitution,  which  says  expressly  that 
they  shall  be  “  delivered  up,”  Mr.  Seward  proceeds  to  set  aside  the  entire  Con¬ 
stitution,  and  to  erect  in  its  stead  his  higher-law  gospel : 

“Bat  there  is  a  higher  law  than  the  Constitution ,  which  regulates  our  authority  over  the 
domain,  and  devotes  it  to  the  same  noble  purposes.” 

In  October,  1855,  at  Albany,  he  said : 

“  Slavery  is  not,  and  never  can  be,  perpetual.  It  will  be  overthrown  either  peacefully 
and  lawfully  under  this  Constitution,  or  it  will  work  the  subversion  of  the  Constitution 
together  with  its  own  overthrow.  Then  the  slaveholder  would  perish  in  the  struggled 

We  quote  from  Horace  Mann,  of  Massachusetts,  former  M.  C. ;  Henry  Wilson, 
U.  S.  Senator;  Charles  Sumner,  Joshua  R.  Giddings,  N.  P.  Banks,  and  other 
leading  Republicans,  all  of  whom  concur  in  temper  and  spirit  with  Mr.  Seward, 
or  surpass  him  in  violence  and  treasonable  doctrine  : 

“  In  conclusion,  I  have  only  to  add  that  such  is  my  solemn  and  abiding  conviction  of  the 
character  of  slavery,  that  under  a  full  sense  of  my  responsibility  to  my  country  and  my 
God,  I  deliberately  say,  better  disunion — better  a  civil  or  a  servile  war — better  anything  that 
God  in  His  providence  shall  send — than  an  extension  of  the  bounds  of  slavery.” — (Speech 
of  Hon.  Horace  Mann.) 

“  We  shall  change  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  and  placemen  in  that  court 
who  believe  with  its  pure  and  immaculate  Chief  Justice,  John  Jay,  that  our  prayers  will  be 
impious  to  heaven  while  we  sustain  and  support  human  slavery.  We  shall  free  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  from  Judge  Kane.  And  here  let  me  say  there  is  a  public  senti¬ 
ment  growing  up  in  this  country  that  regards  Passamore  Williamson  in  his  prison  at  Phila¬ 
delphia  as  a  martyr  to  the  holy  cause  of  personal  liberty.  There  is  a  public  sentiment 
springing  up  that  will  brand  upon  the  brow  of  Judge  Kane  a  mark  that  will  make  him  ex¬ 
claim,  as  his  namesake,  the  elder  Cain  :  -  It  is  too  great  for  me  to  bear.’” — (Speech  of  Sen¬ 
ator  Wilson,  October,  1855,  at  New  York.) 

At  the  Philadelphia  American  Convention,  June  12,  1855,  Senator  Wilson  said: 

“I  am  in  favor  of  relieving  the  Federal  Government  from  all  connection  with,  and  respon¬ 
sibility  for,  the  existence  of  slavery.  To  effect  this  object  I  am  in  favor  of  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  and  the  prohibition  of  slavery  in  all  the  Territories .” 

“  I  tell  you  here  to-night,  that  the  agitation  of  this  question  of  slavery  will  continue 
while  the  foot  of  a  slave  presses  the  soil  of  the  American  Republic.” — (Speech  of  same  Sena¬ 
tor  on  another  occasion. 

“  There  was  no  freedom  at  the  South  for  either  white  or  black ;  and  he  would  strive  to  pro¬ 
tect  the  free  soil  of  the  North  from  the  same  blighting  curse.  There  was  really  no  Union 
now  between  the  North  and  the  South ;  and  he  believed  no  two  nations  upon  the  earth  enter¬ 
tained  feelings  of  more  bitter  rancor  towards  each  other  than  these  two  sections  of  the  Re¬ 
public.  The  only  salvation  of  the  Union,  therefore,  was  to  be  found  in  divesting  it  entirely  from 
all  taint  of  slavery.  There  was  no  Union  with  the  South.  Let  us  have  a  Union,”  said 
he,  “  or  let  us  sweep  away  this  remnant  which  we  call  a  Union.  I  go  for  a  Union  where  all 
men  are  equal ,  or  for  no  Union  at  all,  and  I  go  for  right.” — (Speech  of  Senator  Wade,  of 
Ohio,  at  a  mass  meeting  of  Republicans  in  Maine,  in  1855,  reported  in  Boston  Atlas.) 

Mr.  Wade  is  now  a  leading  Republican  Senator. 

“  The  obligation  incumbent  upon  the  free  States  to  deliver  up  fugitive  slaves,  is  that  bur¬ 
den  ;  and  it  must  be  obliterated  from  that  Constitution  at  every  hazard .” — (Speech  of  Hon. 
Josiah  Quincy  at  Boston,  August  18,  1854.) 

Listen  to  Charles  Sumner,  another  Republican  Senator,  advising  resistance  to 
the  Fugitive  Slave  law  in  Boston,  and  in  the  United  States  Senate  : 

“  The  good  citizen,  as  he  reads  the  requirements  of  this  act,  (relative  to  fugitive  slaves,) 
is  filled  with  horror.  *  *  *  Here  the  path  of  duty  is  clear.  I  am  bound  to 

DISOBEY  THIS  ACT.”  ****** 

“  Sir,  I  will  not  dishonor  this  home  of  the  Pilgrims,  and  of  the  Revolution,  by  admitting — 
nay,  I  cannot  believe — that  this  bill  will  be  executed  here.” — (Sumner’s  Boston  speech,  1850. ) 

This  seditious  conspirator  is  the  pet  of  his  State  and  party. 

“  There  are  men,  or  rather  beings  with  the  semblance  of  men,  who  go  about  the  country 
declaring  that  Charles  Sumner  is  not  hurt,  as  stated  ;  but  that  he  is  merely  playing  possum. 


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They  lie,  and  they  know  it.  Forgive  me,  fellow-citizens,”  said  the  speaker,  “  for  using 
this  language.  1  feel  incensed  against  men  who  thus  injure  the  noblest  and  purest  cham¬ 
pion  of  freedom.” — (Speech  of  Hon.  Anson  Burlingame  at  Lancaster,  Pa.,  October,  1856.) 

“  The  Republican  party  does  not  wish  to  interfere  in  the  internal  government  or  social 
institutions  of  the  slave  States,  but  merely  to  place  around  them  a  cordon  of  free  States. 
Then  this  horrible  system  will  die  of  inanition  :  or,  Wee  the  scorpion, seeing  no  meins,  of  escape, 
sting  itself  to  death." — (Speech  of  Hon.  Anson  Burlingame,  of  Massachusetts,  at  Lancaster, 
Pa.,  October,  1856.) 

“  The  cry  of  ‘the  Union  is  in  danger,’  is  the  argument  of  fools  to  an  audience  of  idiots.” 
(Speech  of  Hon.  Thaddeus  Stevens,  of  Pennsylvania,  at  Lancaster,  October,  1856.) 

“  In  the  other  section,  they  found  fifteen  slave  States.  There  they  did  not  find  the  me¬ 
chanic  arts,  save  in  a  rude  form  ;  there  they  did  not  find  commerce,  nor  philanthropic  insti¬ 
tutions  ;  but  they  found  three  millions  of  slaves,  and  six  millions  of  degraded  white 
freemen  !” — (Speech  of  Senator  Wilson,  of  Massachusetts,  in  New  York,  October  4,  1856.) 

“  We  deny  the  authority  of  Congress,  or  a  territorial  legislature,  of  any  individual  or 
association,  or  individuals,  to  give  legal  assistance  to  slavery  in  any  Territory  of  the 
United  States,  while  the  present  Constitution  shall  be  maintained.” — (Republican  plat¬ 
form  of  1856.) 

“  Resolved,  That  the  Constitution  confers  upon  Congress  sovereign  power  over  the  Terri¬ 
tories  of  the  United  States  for  their  government,  and  that  in  the  exercise  of  this  power,  it 
is  both  the  right  and  duty  of  Congress  to  prohibit  in  the  Territory  those  twin  relics  of 
barbarism,  polygamy  and  slavery.” — (Republican  platform  of  1856.) 

The  foregoing  extracts,  from  the  Republican  platform  of  1856,  are  in  conso¬ 
nance  with  the  revolutionary  doctrines  of  Seward,  Wilson,  and  others  above  cited; 
and  the  several  resolutions  quoted  is  but  the  digest  of  Sumner’s  late  offensive 
harangue  in  the  U.  S.  Senate  upon  what  he  termed  the  u  barbarism  of  slavery .” 

John  P.  Hale,  of  New  Hampshire,  a  delegate  to  the  Republican  Fremont  Con¬ 
vention,  of  17th  June,  1856,  and  then,  as  now,  a  leading  Republican  Senator, 
addressed  that  convention,  and  said  : 

“  Mr.  Hale  congratulated  the  convention  upon  the  spirit  of  unanimity  with  which  it  had 
done  its  work.  1  believe ,”  said  he,  uthat  this  is  not  so  much  a  convention  to  change  the  ad¬ 
ministration  of  the  government,  but  to  say  whether  there  shall  be  any  government  to  be  adminis¬ 
tered.  You  have  assembled,  not  to  say  whether  this  Union  shall  be  preserved,  but  to  say  whether 
it  shall  be  a  blessing  or  a  scorn  and  hissing  among  the  nations .” 

Rufus  P.  Spaulding  was  a  leading  member  of  the  Republican  party  of  1856. 
He  said  : 

“  In  the  case  of  the  alternative  being  presented,  of  the  continuance  of  slavery  or  a  disso¬ 
lution  of  the  Union,  I  am  for  dissolution ;  and  I  care  not  how  quick  it  comes.” 

Nathaniel  P.  Ranks,  of  Massachusetts,  was  chosen  by  the  Black  Republicans 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives  at  the  session  of  1855-6.  The  follow¬ 
ing  is  an  extract  from  one  of  his  New  England  speeches  : 

“  Although  I  am  not  one  of  that  class  of  men  who  cry  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union  ; 
though  I  am  willing,  in  a  certain  state  of  circumstances,  to  let  it  slide,  I  have  no  fear  for  its 
perpetuation.  But  let  me  say,  if  the  chief  object  of  the  people  of  this  country  be  to  main¬ 
tain  and  propagate  chattel  property  in  man — in  other  words,  human  slavery — this  Union 
cannot  and  ought  not  to  stand." 

While  Mr.  Banks  was  a  candidate  for  the  Speakership,  he  was  interrogated  as 
to  his  views  upon  the  subject  of  an  equality  of  the  white  and  black  races.  Mr. 
Banks  was  in  doubt  upon  this  point;  but  took  good  care  not  to  admit  the  inferi¬ 
ority  of  the  negro  race.  He  said  : 

“So  far  as  he  had  studied  the  subject  of  races,  he  had  adopted  the  idea  that  when  there 
is  a  weaker  race  in  existence,  it  will  succumb  to  and  be  absorbed  in  the  stronger  race. 
This  was  the  universal  law  as  regarded  the  races  of  men  in  the  world.  In  regard  to  the 
question,  whether  the  white  race  or  the  black  race  was  superior,  he  proposed  to  wait  until  time  should 
deve'op  whether  the  white  race  should  absorb  the  black,  or  the  black  absorb  the  white.” 

Mr.  Banks  was  elected  by  a  solid,  sectional,  abolition  vote.  It  appears  that 
previous  to  his  election,  it  was  demanded  that  he  should  pledge  himself  to  organize 
the  committees  of  the  House  upon  sectional  principles.  This  disgraceful  stipu¬ 
lation  was  put  through  at  the  instance  of  Joshua  R.  Giddings,  in  caucus.  See  the 
Ohio  State  Journal,  a  Republican  paper,  of  that  date,  which  says  : 


4 


“On  the  1st  instant,  at  a  very  full  meeting  of  the  members  opposed  to  the  extension  of 
slavery,  the  following  resolution,  offered  by  that  vigilant,  tried,  and  stern  old  man,  Mr. 
Giddings,  was  adopted  without  a  dissenting  voice  : 

“  Resolved,  That  we  will  support  no  man  for  Speaker  who  is  not  pledged  to  carry  out  the 
parliamentary  law  by  giving  to  each  proposed  measure,  ordered  by  the  House  to  be  com¬ 
mitted,  a  majority  of  such  special  committee,  and  to  organize,  the  standing  committees  of  the 
House  by  placing  on  each  a  majority  of  the  friends  of  freedom,  and  ivho  are  favorable  to  making 
reports  on  all  petitions  committed  to  them.” 

Mr.  Banks  has  been  and  is  now  the  Republican  G-overnor  of  Massachusetts,  and 
was  a  prominent  candidate  of  the  Republicans  for  the  Presidency.  He  carried 
out  his  instructions  as  Speaker  of  the  House.  Mr.  Giddings  was  a  leader  of  the 
Fremont  Convention  in  1856,  and  was  one  of  the  most  prominent  persons  in  the 
Convention  of  1860,  which  nominated  Abraham  Lincoln.  Listen  to  him : 

“  I  look  forward  to  the  day  when  there  shall  be  a  servile  insurrection  in  the  South  ;  when 
the  black  man,  armed  with  British  bayonets,  and  led  on  by  British  officers,  shall  assert  his 
freedom,  and  wage  a  war  of  extermination  against  his  master;  when  the  torch  of  the  incen¬ 
diary  shall  light  up  the  towns  and  cities  of  the  South,  and  blot  out  the  last  vestige  of  slavery. 
And  though  I  may  not  mock  at  their  calamity,  nor  laugh  when  their  fear  cometh,  yet  I 

WILL  HAIL  IT  AS  THE  DAWN  OF  A  POLITICAL  MILLENIUM.” 

The  following  is  the  position  upon  the  Fugitive  Slave  law  of  this  Republican 
leader  of  the  Convention  of  1860 — a  man  who  had  influence  enough  in  that 
body  to  obtain  the  insertion  of  a  plank  in  the  platform,  intended  by  him  to 
imply  the  doctrine  of  negro  equality.  (See  the  letter  of  Hon.  Joshua  R.  Gid¬ 
dings  to  a  meeting  at  Palmyra,  Ohio,  in  1850.)  He  says  : 

“  The  Fugitive  Slave  law  commands  us  to  participate  in  arresting  and  sending  victims 
to  this  southern  immolation,  by  torture  a  thousand  times  more  cruel  than  ordinary  assassi¬ 
nation.  I  would  be  as  willing  to  handle  the  scourge,  to  sink  the  thing  into  his  quivering 
flesh,  and  to  tear  from  him  the  life  which  God  has  given  him,  as  to  seize  him  and  hand  him 
over  to  his  tormenters,  with  the  full  knowledge  and  conviction  that  they  will  do  it.  Nor  is 
the  crime  of  the  slave-catcher  less  in  the  sight  of  God  and  good  men,  than  is  the  guilt  of 
him  who  consummates  the  outrage  by  this  final  sacrifice  of  the  victim. 

“Yet,  we  are  told,  we  must  obey  this  law  and  perpetuate  these  crimes,  until  a  slave- 
ridden  Congress  shall  see  fit  to  reclaim  us  from  such  sin  against  God  by  repealing  the  law. 
Whether  it  be  right  to  obey  God  rather  than  man,  judge  ye. 

“  From  my  inmost  soul,  I  abhor,  detest,  and  repudiate  this  law.  I  despise  the  human 
being  who  would  obey  it,  if  such  a  being  has  existence .” 

Here  is  resistance  to  a  law  of  the  land,  which  has  been  pronounced  consti¬ 
tutional  by  the  judicial  tribunals,  openly  counselled  by  Giddings,  as  we  have  shown 
it  to  be  by  Sumner,  Seward,  and  other  Republican  leaders  !  These  men,  with 
Greely ,  Banks,  and  other  kindred  spirits,  are  the  men  whom  Lincoln,  if  chosen 
President,  would  call  to  aid  him  in  “  administering  the  laws”  of  the  Union,  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  oath  prescribed.  Are  such  men  fit  to  be  trusted  with  such  duties  ? 

Listen  to  Hon.  Anson  Burlingame,  Republican  member  of  Congress  from  Massa¬ 
chusetts  : 

“  The  times  demand,  and  we  must  have,  an  anti-slavery  Constitution,  an  anti-slavery 
Bible,  and  an  anti-slavery  God  !” 

No  Republican  press  has  ever  rebuked  or  disavowed  this  frightful  blasphemy. 
In  fact,  it  is  but  a  sample  of  their  ordinary  political  harangues. 

“  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  free  and  slave  States  ought  to  separate.” — (J.  S.  P.,  regular 
correspondent  of  New  York  Tribune.) 

When  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  was  pending,  Greely,  of  the  New  York  Tribune, 
was  for  destroying  the  Government  and  Union  rather  than  allow  the  bill  to  pass 
by  the  ordinary  forms  of  legislation.  He  said  : 

“We  urge,  therefore,  unbending  determination  on  the  part  of  the  northern  members  hos¬ 
tile  to  this  intolerable  outrage,  and  demand  of  them,  in  behalf  of  peace,  in  behalf  of  freedom, 
in  behalf  of  justice  and  humanity,  resistance  to  the  last.  Better  that  confusion  should 
ensue — better  that  discord  should  reign  in  the  national  councils — better  that  Congress  should 
break  up  in  wild  discord — nay,  better  that  the  Capitol  itself  should  blaze  by  the  torch  of  the  inctn- 


5 

diary ,  or  fall  and  bury  all  its  inmates  beneath  its  crumbling  ruins,  than  that  this  perfidy  and 
wrong  should  be  finally  accomplished .” 

The  sympathy  of  the  Republican  party  with  these  anarchical  and  revolutionary 
views  of  Horace  Greely,  and  their  readiness  to  break  up  the  government  in  order 
to  carry  out  their  plans,  was  fully  shown  some  few  months  afterwards  by  their 
defeating  the  Army  Appropriation  hill  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  where 
they  were  in  a  majority;  thus  stopping  the  wheels  of  government ,  and  compelling 
an  extra  session  of  Congress,  because  the  Senate  would  not  relinquish  their 
powers  as  a  co-ordinate  branch  of  the  G-overnment,  and  agree  to  the  unconstitu¬ 
tional  proviso  passed  by  the  House,  depriving  the  President  of  the  command  of 
the  army  and  navy  of  the  United  States! 

James  Watson  Webb,  a  member  of  the  Fremont  Convention,  and  the  editor 
of  the  New  York  Courier  and  Enquirer,  a  leading  Republican  organ,  made  a 
speech  in  that  body,  from  which  we  extract  the  following : 

“  Our  people — loving  order,  loving  law,  and  willing  to  abide  by  the  ballot-box — come 
together  from  all  parts  of  the  Union  and  ask  us  to  give  them  a  nomination  which,  when 
fairly  put  before  the  people,  will  unite  public  sentiment,  and  through  the  ballot-box  will 
restrain  and  repel  this  pro-slavery  extension,  and  this  aggression  of  the  slaveocracy. 
What  else  are  they  doing?  They  tell  you  they  are  willing  to  abide  by  the  ballot-box,  and 
willing  to  make  that  last  appeal.  If  we  fail  there,  what  then  ?  We  will  drive  it  back,  sword 
in  hand,  and,  so  help  me  God,  believing  that  to  be  right,  I  am  with  them.  [Loud  cheers,  and 
cries  of  ‘good.’]  Northern  gentlemen,  on  your  action  depends  the  result.  You  may,  with 
God’s  blessing,  present  to  this  country  a  name,  rallying  around  it  all  the  elements  of  the 
opposition,  and  thus  we  will  become  so  strong  that,  through  the  ballot-box,  we  shall  save 
the  country.  But,  if  a  name  be  presented  on  which  we  may  not  rally,  and  the  consequence  is 
civil  war — nothing  more,  nothing  less,  but  civil  war — 1  ask,  then,  what  is  our  first  duty  ?” 

The  assigned  cause  for  the  formation,  organization,  violence,  treason,  and  re¬ 
sistance  to  the  laws  by  the  Republican  party,  was  the  repeal  in  the  Kansas-Nebraska 
act,  of  the  Missouri  compromise  line  of  36°  30'.  Yet  it  is  notorious  that  the  line 
was  voted  against  by  the  freesoilers  and  abolitionists,  when  proposed  to  be  applied 
to  Texas  by  the  South,  in  1844.  This  line  was  framed  on  the  principle  of  &  par¬ 
tition  or  division  of  the  Territory  between  the  North  and  the  South.  In  1847-8, 
9,  and  50,  when  the  South  demanded  the  application  of  this  line  (of  thirty-six, 
thirty)  to  the  Territories  acquired  from  Mexico,  these  freesoilers  voted  it  down. 
In  1854  and  '5,  they  were  ready  to  dissolve  the  Union  to  preserve  this  line,  which 
they,  years  before,  repudiated  with  scorn. 

In  1856,  the  staple  of  their  party  was  the  pretended  outrages  upon  their  friends 
in  Kansas.  All  these  troubles  there,  sprung  from  the  resistance  of  men  like  John 
Brown  and  Jim  Lane  to  the  laws  and  judicial  tribunals  of  the  Territory.  How 
far  this  violence  belonged  to  one  party  may  be  seen  from  the  following  extract : 

Wequot  e  from  the  Kansas  correspondent  of  the  New  York  Times ,  a  Repub¬ 
lican  Press,  in  1856 : 

“  About  one  hundred  of  Lane’s  party,  including  Dr.  Cutter’s,  were  on  hand,  and  seemed 
to  glory  in  an  opportunity  to  fight  so  soon  for  principle.  They  are  a  fine-looking  set  of 
men,  and  are  of  the  right  stamp  to  make  Kansas  free — that  is,  they  have  the  nerve  and  the 
will  to  hew  out  their  own  fortunes  freely  and  boldly.  To-morrow  our  camp  moves  into 
town,  to  await  further  orders.  The  campaign  seems  begun.  The  third  last  monster  invasion 
of  Kansas  is  at  hand,  and  the  cry  is,  Spare  not.” 

In  consonance  with  such  a  hellish  spirit,  we  find  the  murder  of  the  Doyles 
and  other  unarmed  men  in  Kansas  by  John  Brown  and  his  party — by  John  Brown, 
the  favorite  of  the  Republican  party — John  Brown,  whose  services  and  accomplish¬ 
ments  shown  in  the  work  of  murder  and  assassination  in  Kansas  induced  the  Re¬ 
publicans  to  entrust  him  with  the  Harper’s  Ferry  invasion.  Mrs.  Doyle  testifies 
that  John  Brown  and  his  party  of  soldiers  took  her  husband  from  his  bed  by 
night  and  her  two  eldest  boys,  and  led  them  outside  of  the  building,  where  they 
murdered  them  in  cold  blood.  Allen,  Wilkinson,  and  Sherman,  were  murdered 


6 

under  similar  circumstances  by  John  Brown,  and  the  Republicans  forthwith  ex¬ 
tolled  him  to  the  skies  as  a  hero  ! 

A  letter  dated  August  22,  1856,  to  the  Springfield  (Mass.)  Republican ,  a  Re¬ 
publican  paper,  says : 

“  We  are  having  war  in  earnest — four  fights  within  the  last  five  days,  in  all  of  which  the 
frce-State  men  were  the  assailants,  and  the  victors.  Four  lives  lost  on  our  side,  and  some 
eight  or  ten  badly  wounded.” 

Is  this  what  the  Republicans  refer  to  by  their  parrot-cry  of  u  bleeding  Kansas?” 

But  read  the  following  disgraceful  confession  which  appeared  in  the  New  York 
Times,  (a  Republican  sheet.)  It  fully  shows  that  the  system  of  outrage  and 
violence  was  purposely  kept  alive  in  Kansas  during  the  campaign  of  1856,  with 
a  view  to  inflame  the  popular  mind  of  the  North  against  the  South,  and  thus  pro¬ 
mote  Fremont’s  election : 

“Lawrence,  Kansas,  Monday,  July2\,  1856. 

“Companies  of  dragoons  are  stationed  at  Lecompton,  Blanton,  Palmyra,  and  Cedar 
Creek.  In  their  immediate  neighborhood,  and  generally  throughout  the  Territory,  affairs 
appear  quiet  and  peaceful.  This  appearance,  however,  is  deceptive.  The  same  feelings — 
the  same  desire  to  fight — exists  now  as  did  exist  before  the  appearance  of  the  dragoons. 
Travelers  here  and  there  are  stopped  and  robbed,  and  cabins  where  arms  are  secreted  and  men 
stationed  are  assaulted  and  rifled  of  their  arms  and  ammunition.  These  attacks  on  the  part 
of  the  free-State  party  are  conducted  in  a  more  quiet  and  orderly  manner  than  heretofore. 
W’hendone,  it  is  done  so  that  no  bogus  sheriff,  backed  by  the  United  States  dragoous,  kuows 
upon  whom  to  put  his  finger.  Within  a  few  days  arms  and  ammunition  have  been  taken 
from  different  places  where  they  had  been  stored  by  the  pro-slavery  regulators,  and  expe¬ 
ditions  are  now  on  foot  looking  to  further  captures  !  We  are  frequently  in  receipt  of 
rumors  from  different  parts  of  the  Territory,  giving  account  of  the  encampments  of  armed  men. 
Enough  daily  happens  to  keep  alive  the  excitement  and  give  healthful  encourage¬ 
ment  TO  the  war  spirit.” 

This  writer  lets  out  the  whole  secret  of  the  Republican  campaign  of  1856.  It 
was  war  in  Kansas,  and  agitation  at  the  North.  His  operations  in  the  line  of 
bloodshed  and  robbery  looked  solely  to  Fremont’s  election.  John  Brown  appears 
to  have  been  controlled  by  a  cordial  love  for  such  “  Kansas  work” — to  use 
his  own  expressive  phrase — while  many  of  their  associates  were  probably  con¬ 
trolled  by  both  these  motives.  The  sagacity  of  the  people  detected  this  foul 
conspiracy,  and  by  the  Presidential  election  of  1860  the  Republican  party  was 
found  to  be  in  a  minority,  in  the  popular  vote  of  the  Union,  by  the  instrumen¬ 
tality  of  not  less  than  1,346,000  votes!  !  It  has  lost  instead  of  gaining  strength 
since  then;  but  by  the  divisions  of  the  conservative  masses  opposed  to  them,  this 
party,  which  is  now  in  a  minority  of  more  than  a  million  of  the  popular  vote  of 
the  Union,  dares  to  hope  and  contend  for  an  administration  of  the  government 
upon  its  own  sectional,  unconstitutional,  and  infamous  basis.  It  aims  to  work 
wrong,  injustice,  and  insult  to  our  southern  brethren  of  a  minority  government. 

At  December  term,  1856,  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  gave  its  decision 
in  the  celebrated  Dred  Scott  case.  The  case  had  been  begun  in  Missouri  in  1853, 
was  appealed  to  the  Supreme  Court,  and  the  judgment  there  appeared  in  the  spring 
of  1857.  With  unusual  unanimity  the  court  ruled  that  a  negro  was  not  a  citizen 
of  the  United  States,  and  that  neither  by  Congress  or  by  a  Territorial  legislature 
(the  creature  of  Congress)  could  the  right  of  property  in  slaves  held  in  a  Terri¬ 
tory  be  impaired  or  destroyed.  This  decision  was  a  death-blow  to  the  doctrines 
of  negro  equality  and  the  Wilmot  proviso,  which  were  the  corner-stone  of  the  Re¬ 
publican  faith.  Forthwith  their  presses  all  over  the  land  teemed  with  the  foulest 
abuse  of  the  court,  and  contempt  for  its  authority.  The  judges  who,  up  to  that 
hour,  had  been  revered  by  every  good  citizen,  and  respected  even  by  the  bad,  were 
reviled  as  the  tools  of  the  “  slave  power,”  their  personal  characters  assailed,  and 
the  members  of  the  court  declared  to  be  in  their  dotage.  The  Tribune ,  which  is 
more  read  than  any  other  Republican  organ,  declared  that  their  judgment  was 


7 


not  entitled  to  any  more  “  moral  weight  than  the  judgment  of  a  majority  of  those 
congregated  in  any  Washington  bar-room. ” 

Mr.  Seward  charged  directly  collusion  and  corrupt  connivance  on  the  court, 
in  his  speech  in  the  Senate  on  3d  March,  1858.  Hear  him  : 

“  The  mock  debate  had  been  heard  in  the  chamber  of  the  court  in  the  basement  of  the 
Capitol,  in  the  presence  of  the  curious  visitors  at  the  seat  of  Government,  whom  the  dullness 
of  a  judicial  investigation  could  not  disgust.  The  court  did  not  hesitate  to  please  the  incoming 
President  by  seizing  this  extraneous  and  idle  forensic  discussion,  and  converting  it  into  an 
occasion  for  pronouncing  an  opinion  that  the  Missouri  prohibition  was  void,  and  that  by  force  of 
the  Constitution,  slavery  existed,  with  all  the  elements  of  property  in  man  over  man,  in  ail 
the  Territories  of  the  United  States,  paramount  to  any  popular  sovereignty  within  the  Ter¬ 
ritories,  and  even  to  the  authority  of  Congress  itself.”  *  *  * 

“  The  day  of  inauguration  came — the  first  one  among  all  the  celebrations  of  that  great 
national  pageant  that  was  to  be  desecrated  by  a  coalition  between  the  Executive  and  Judicial 
departments,  to  undermine  the  national  legislature  and  the  liberties  of  the  people." 

Well  might  Senator  Benjamin  ask,  “  Is  there  a  solitary  word  of  truth  in  this  ? 
Not  one.  Is  a  solitary  fact  alleged  ?  Not  one;  hut  a  broad  and  naked  charge 
is  made,  which  is  intended  to  stamp  infamy  upon  characters  hitherto  beyond  the 
breath  of  reproach.  Shame,  shame  upon  the  Senator  that  makes  such  charges  as 
these,  and  has  no  proof  to  support  them/’ 

Further  on,  in  the  same  speech,  Mr.  Seward  boldly  threatens  an  attempt  to  re¬ 
organize  the  Supreme  Court  so  as  to  make  it  conform  to  the  will  of  the  Repub¬ 
lican  party.  He  says : 

The  Supreme  Court  also  can  reverse  its  spurious  judgment  more  easily  than  we  can 
reconcile  the  people  to  its  usurpation.”  *  *  “The  people  of  the  United 

States  never  can,  and  they  never  will,  accept  principles  so  unconstitutional  and  so  abhorent. 
Kever,  never.  Let  the  court  recede.  Whether  it  recedes  or  not,  we  shall  reorganize  the 
COURT,  AND  THUS  REFORM  ITS  POLITICAL  SENTIMENTS  AND  PRACTICES,  and  bring  them  into 
harmony  with  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of  nature.” 

Following  up  the  same  strain,  Mr.  Abraham  Lincoln  says  :  “  The  people  of  the 
United  iS totes  are  the  rightful  masters  of  both  Congress  and  courts.”  Mr.  Lincoln 
proposes  to  substitute  popular  clamor,  however  transient  or  erroneous,  for  the  con¬ 
clusions  of  an  independent  judiciary  bound  by  their  oaths  to  look  only  to  the  law 
and  the  facts. 

Mr.  Abbott,  a  Republican  member  of  the  House,  said  : 

“  Hence,  the  opinions  of  the  court  therein  expressed  are  not  only  false,  but  they  are  extra¬ 
judicial  usurpations,  entitled  to  no  more  respect  than  the  opinions  of  any  other  equal  number 
of  political  demagogues  and  similar  morals  with  themselves .” 

The  address  of  the  Republican  Convention,  of  New  York,  October,  1855,  says  : 

“  It  is  one  of  the  most  lamentable  features  of  the  present  Democratic  degeneracy,  that  it 
has  invaded  even  the  sanctuary  of  justice,  and  from  the  seat  once  honored  by  Jay,  Rutledge, 
Ellsworth,  and  Marshall,  novj  strains  its  equity  through  the  sieve  of  sectionalism,  in  accents  as 
barbarous  as  they  are  disgraceful  to  the  nation  to  which  we  belong,  and  the  age  in  which 
we  live.  The  infamy  of  the  Dred  Scott  decision  is  but  a  legitimate  sequence  to  the  efforts 
that  have  been  put  forth  to  sectionalize  and  pack  a  tribunal  in  which  was  once  centered  the 
respect  and  confidence  of  the  nation  /” 

In  October,  1858,  we  find  Mr.  Seward,  then  confessed  by  all  as  the  leader  and 
master-spirit  of  the  Republicans,  laying  down,  in  his  Rochester  speech,  their  mani¬ 
festo  of  future  operations.  It  contemplates  no  peace  with  the  South,  no  cessation 
of  the  sectional  strife,  nothing  but  enduring  hostility  to  southern  institutions. 
He  says  : 

“  Thus,  these  antagonistic  systems  are  continually  coming  into  closer  contact,  and  col¬ 
lision  results.  Shall  I  tell  you  what  this  collision  means  ?  They  who  think  it  is  accidental, 
unnecessary,  the  work  of  interested  or  fanatical  agitators,  and  therefore  ephemeral,  mistake 
the  case  altogether.  It  is  an  irrepressible  conflict  between  opposing  and  enduring 
forces,  and  it  means  that  the  United  States  must  and  will,  sooner  or  later,  become  entirely  a 
slaveholding  nation,  or  entirely  a  free-labor  nation.  Either  the  cotton  and  rice  fields  of 
South  Carolina,  and  the  sugar  plantations  of  Louisiana,  will  ultimately  be  tilled  by  free  labor. 


8 


# 

and  Charleston  and  New  Orleans  become  marts  for  legitimate  merchandise  alone,  or  else  the  rye 
fields  and  wheat  fields  of  Massachusetts  and  New  York  must  again  be  surrendered  by  their 
farmers  to  slave  culture,  and  to  the  production  of  slaves,  and  Boston  and  New  York  become 
once  more  a  market  for  trade  in  the  bodies  and  souls  of  men.  It  is  the  failure  to  appre¬ 
hend  this  great  truth  that  induces  so  many  unsuccessful  attempts  at  final  compromise  between 
the  slave  and  free  States,  and  it  is  the  existence  of  this  great  fact  that  renders  all  such  pre¬ 
tended  compromise,  when  made,  vain  and  ephemeral .” 

The  whole  country  was  startled  and  disgusted  at  this  brutal  and  bloody  mani¬ 
festo.  Conservative  men  of  the  North  stood  aghast  at  the  idea  of  an  unending 
strife  between  the  North  a*nd  the  South.  They  held  that  it  was  not  necessary  for 
either  section  to  force  its  system  upon  the  other,  and  they  knew  that,  to  attempt  it, 
would  compel  disunion  and  civil  war.  This  doctrine  of  Seward’s,  however,  was  not 
new  with  him.  It  may  be  found  shadowed  forth  in  the  speeches  of  Wilson  and  other 
Republicans  heretofore  quoted,  and  was  distinctly  avowed  anterior  to  Seward  by 
Mr.  Abraham  Lincoln,  the  present  Republican  candidate  for  the  Presidency, 
in  his  canvass  for  the  United  States  Senate.  Hear  him: 

“  In  my  opinion,  it  (the  slavery  agitation)  will  not  cease  until  a  crisis  shall  have  been 
reached  and  passed.  ‘  A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand.'  I  believe  the  Government 
cannot  endure  permanently  half  slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not  expect  the  house  to  fall,  but  1 
do  expect  it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will  become  all  one  thing,  or  all  the  other.  Either 
the  opponents  of  slavery  will  arrest  the  further  spread  of  it,  and  place  it  where  the  public 
mind  shall  rest  in  the  belief  that  it  is  in  the  course  of  ultimate  extinction,  or  its  advocates 
will  push  forward  till  it  shall  become  alike  lawful  in  all  the  States — old  as  well  as  new,  North 
as  well  as  South.” 

It  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Seward  has  merely  worked  up  Lincoln’s  ideas  into 
somewhat  better  phraseology,  and  that,  for  the  sentiments  of  sectional  hate  and 
antagonism  involved,  they  are  equally  responsible  before  Glod  and  man.  Let  no 
conservative  or  thoughtful  man  imagine  that  Seward  was  discarded  because  of 
his  ultraism,  when  we  find  Lincoln  on  precisely  the  same  ground. 

Again,  at  Rome,  New  York,  in  same  month,  (October,  1858,)  Mr.  Seward  says  : 

“Everything  has  been  lost  which  can  be  lost,  except  the  enjoyment  of  freedom  and  the 
exclusion  of  slavery  within  the  free  States.  Slavery  remains  apparently  stronger  than  ever 
in  all  the  slave  States,  and  freedom  of  speech,  freedom  of  the  press,  and  freedom  of  suffrage 
upon  the  subject  of  slavery,  are  actually  unknown  in  those  States.  Slavery  remains  in  the 
District  of  Columbia  defiant  of  all  your  power;  slavery  remains  in  all  the  arsenals,  docks, 
and  navy-yards  of  the  United  States,  and  upon  all  the  decks  of  your  national  marine.” 

“To  retrieve  these  losses  will  be  the  work  of  a  future  day.'1' 

After  the  seeds  of  hate  to  the  South  had  been  thus  planted  in  the  minds  of  the 
ignorant  and  fanatical  by  the  Republican  leaders,  it  was  not  surprising  that  one 
who  had  been  almost  idolized  by  the  Republican  party  for  his  midnight  murders 
of  unarmed  southern  men  in  cold  blood  in  Kansas,  should  essay  to  carry  out 
these  teachings  of  an  “irrepressible  conflict,”  by  stirring  up  a  servile  insurrec¬ 
tion  in  Virginia.  This  bloody  work  was  begun  by  John  Brown,  at  Harper’s  Ferry, 
with  a  band  of  Republicans,  black  and  white,  aided  by  arms  and  money  supplied 
by  their  political  friends,  on  Sunday  night,  the  16th  October,  1859.  The  time 
was  fitly  chosen  by  a  party  which  clamors  for  an  “  anti-slavery  Bible  and  anti¬ 
slavery  Grod.  We  shall  not  recite  how  the  town  and  United  States  arsenal  were 
seized — how  freedom  was  offered  to  the  blacks,  and  pikes  wherewith  to  murder 
the  whites,  and  thus  renew  the  scenes  of  Saint  Domingo;  and  how  peaceful  and 
unoffending  white  citizens  were  murdered  in  the  sight  of  their  families  by  these 
Republican  wretches,  fresh  from  Kansas,  and  covered  with  plaudits  for  like  deeds 
there.  The  country  is  familiar  with  the  facts,  and  will  not  soon  forget  how,  from 
the  first  day  to  the  very  last,  when  all  these  men  paid  the  penalty  they  could  by 
their  deaths  for  their  atrocious  crimes,  the  Republican  press  and  orators  apolo¬ 
gized  for  their  acts,  extenuated  their  conduct,  traduced  the  State  which  punished 
the  murderers,  and  eulogized  those  murderers  as  martyrs  and  heroes  in  the  cause 
of  liberty!  The  people  will  recall  how  thousands  of  dollars  have  been  collected 


9 


for  Brown’s  family,  while  thousands  of  deserving  and  honest  men,  women,  and 
children  at  the  North  were  suffering  last  winter  for  bread. 

Take  the  doctrine  of  the  New  York  Times  upon  John  Brown,  and  every  man 
who  believes  free  labor  the  best  state  of  society  is  bound  to  approve  and  justify 
his  (Brown’s)  acts : 

“  No  man  can  justify  an  insurrection  of  southern  slaves  upon  any  other  basis  than  this — 
that  a  better  state  of  society  for  all  concerned  would  certainly  result  from  it  than  that  which 
now  exists.  Anything  less  than  this  would  not  compensate  for  the  slaughter  of  innocent 
women  and  children,  the  wholesale  destruction  of  property,  the  infliction  of  torture,  rapine, 
and  every  imaginable  horror,  the  overthrow  of  all  order,  peace,  and  security,  and  the  black 
and  bloody  anarchy,  which  must  inevitably  attend  upon  the  most  successful  insurrection  of 
southern  slaves  which  could  possibly  take  place.” 

The  New  York  Tribune,  the  leading  Republican  Journal  of  the  United  States, 
and  read  probably  by  over  400,000  Republicans,  said : 

“There  will  be  enough  to  heap  execration  on  the  memory  of  these  mistaken  men,  (Brown 
and  his  party.)  We  leave  this  work  to  the  fit  hands  and  tongues  of  those  who  regard  the 
fundamental  axioms  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  ‘  glittering  generalities.’  ”  * 

Again,  on  9th  December,  1859,  it  says : 

“  You  know  that  mistaken  old  John  Brown  and  his  brave  sons  with  him  at  Harper’s  Ferry, 
laid  down  their  lives  not  to  injure  but  benefit  the  South ;  that  they  and  their  comrades,  dead 
or  about  to  be  killed,  were  the  least  ‘sectional  of  human  beings.”  They  sacrificed  their  all 
in  an  unlawful  but  heroic  effort  to  benefit  those  whom  they  had  never  seen.” 

Again,  it  says : 

“  Unwise  the  world  will  pronounce  him — reckless  of  artificial  yet  palpable  obligations  he 
certainly  was  ;  but  his  very  errors  were  heroic — the  faults  of  a  brave,  impulsive,  truthful 
nature,  impatient  of  wrong,  and  only  too  conscious  that  resistance  to  tyrants  is  obedience 
to  God  !  Let  whoever  would  first  cast  a  stone,  ask  himself  whether  his  own  noblest  act  was 
equal  in  grandeur  and  nobility  to  that  for  which  John  Brown  pays  the  penalty  of  a  death  on 
the  gallows.”  ******* 

“  To  all  who  have  suffered  for  human  good,  who  have  been  persecuted  for  an  idea,  who 
have  been  hated  because  of  their  efforts  to  make  the  daily  path  of  the  despised  and  unfor- 
tunato  less  rugged,  his  memory  will  be  fragrant  through  generations.  It  will  be  easier  to 
die  hereafter  in  a  good  cause,  even  on  the  gallows,  since  John  Brown  has  hallowed  that 
mode  of  exit  from  the  troubles  and  temptations  of  this  mortal  life.” 

Consider,  fellow-citizens,  that  the  secret  of  all  this  eulogy  of  a  murderer  is,  that 
he  murdered  southern  men  in  an  attempt  to  get  up  a  servile  insurrection  at  the 
South.  Consider,  too,  that  the  editor  who  indites  this  eulogy  upon  the  murderer, 
Brown,  was  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  Chicago  Convention ,  which  nominated  Lincoln , 
and  that  by  his  efforts,  even  Seward  was  set  aside,  not  for  his  ultraism,  but  to 
gratify  the  private  malice  of  a  disappointed  place-hunter. 

Wendell  Phillips,  at  Boston,  in  February,  1860,  said  : 

“  And  better  than  that  Puritan  conscience  awakes ,  and  flings  its  spear  down  into  the  centre 
of  Virginia,  in  the  revolt  of  John  Brown  ;  and  the  world  says,  do  I  approve  of  him?  Well, 
he  is  your  eldest  born,  you  ought  to  know  him ;  he  bears  your  lineaments,  you  ought  to 
acknowledge  him.  lie  is  the  natural  product  of  the  thought  of  the  North,  seeking  vent  somewhere. 
The  irrepressible  conflict  has  begun.”  ***** 

On  the  same  occasion,  Garrison  said  : 

“Whatever  stands  in  the  v*ay  of  this  sacred  cause,  put  it  down.  If  it  is  a  party,  let  the 
party  be  abandoned;  if  it  is  the  Church,  let  the  Church  be  anathematized ;  if  it  is  the  Govern¬ 
ment,  let  the  Government  be  repudiated.” 

The  Chambersburg  (Pennsylvania)  correspondent  of  the  Tribune  writes,  on  the 
26th  October,  1859,  in  respect  to  Cook  and  John  Brown: 

“  The  public  pulse  here  throbs  pity  for  Cook.  *  *  Both  here  and  in  Philadelphia, 

the  conduct  of  Cook  and  of  Brown  is  arousing  a  deeper  and  broader  anti-slavery  sentiment, 
(outside  as  well  as  inside  of  Abolition  circles,)  which  even  Kansas,  with  all  its  horrors  and 
outrages,  failed  signally  to  excite.  Why?  It  has  appealed  to  the  beliqjous  nature  of 
THE  people,  and  water  is  beginning  to  flow  from  the  rock  of  Horeb.” 


10 


The  Rev.  Theodore  Parker  writes,  on  the  24th  November,  1859,  the  following 
upon  J ohn  Brown : 

1.  “A  man  held  against  his  -will  as  a  slave  has  a  natural  right  to  kill  every  one  who  seeks 
to  prevent  his  enjoyment  of  liberty. 

2.  “It  may  be  a  natural  duty  of  the  slave  to  develop  this  natural  right  in  a  practical 
manner,  and  actually  kill  all  those  who  seek  to  prevent  his  enjoyment  of  liberty. 

3.  “  The  freeman  has  a  natural  right  to  help  the  slaves  recover  their  liberty,  and  in  that 
enterprise  to  do  for  them  all  which  they  have  a  right  to  do  for  themselves. 

4.  “  It  may  be  a  natural  duty  for  the  freeman  to  help  the  slaves  to  the  enjoyment  of  their 
liberty,  and,  as  means  to  that  end,  to  aid  them  in  killing  all  such  as  oppose  the  natural  freedom.” 

This  letter  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Parker  is  published  in  the  Tribune  of  27th  De¬ 
cember,  1859,  without  one  word  of  caution  or  dissent. 

On  the  night  of  the  day  Speaker  Pennington  was  elected,  Mr.  Cameron,  United 
States  Senator  from  Pennsylvania,  speaking  of  the  Harper’s  Ferry  invasion,  spoke 
of  it  slightingly,  as  follows : 

“  Never  mind  Harper’s  Ferry,  my  friends,  that  is  a  nine  days’  wonder.” 

Mr.  Hickman,  a  prominent  Republican  member  of  the  House,  said: 

“And  I  say  to  you  to-night,  my  fellow-citizens,  that  if  it  will  require  the  State  of  Vir¬ 
ginia  in  arms  to  take  old  John  Brown,  and  seventeen  men  and  one  cow,  it  will  require  more 
than  the  fifteen  feeble  States  of  the  South  to  successfully  compete  with  the  eighteen  mighty 
States  of  the  North.” 

The  Winstead  (Connecticut)  Herald,  a  Republican  press,  said  of  John  Brown 
and  his  acts  : 

“  For  one,  we  confess  we  love  him,  we  honor  him,  we  applaud  him.  He  is  honest  in  his 
principles,  courageous  in  their  defence,  and  we  have  yet  to  be  taught,  reading  from  the  book 
of  inspiration  we  all  acknowledge,  how  and  wherein  old  John  Brown  is  a  transgressor.” 

“He  dared  to  undertake  what  you ,  (the  Republican  leaders,)  in  the  security  of  your 
sanctums,  only  are  bold  to  preach.” 

We  come  next  in  our  order  to  the  infamous  Helper  book,  or  “  The  Impending 
Crisis  of  the  South — how  to  meet  it — by  Hinton  Rowan  Helper;”  of  which  the 
Republican  leaders  proposed  to  distribute  one  hundred  thousand  copies.  Sixty- 
six  Republican  members  of  Congress  recommended  this  book.  Among  them, 
(thus  cordially  endorsing  the  opinions  and  approving  the  enterprise,)  we  find  all 
the  prominent  Republicans — Colfax,  Burlingame,  Lovejoy,  Granger,  Grow,  Gid- 
dings,  Edward  Wade,  Chaffee,  John  Sherman,  the  Washburns,  Stanton,  Covode, 
Potter,  and  other  leading  men.  It  is  pretended,  in  behalf  of  these  men,  that  they 
had  not  seen  the  compendium;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  original  work, 
of  which  this  was  to  be  a  digest,  is  far  more  offensive,  fanatical,  and  violent,  than 
the  compend.  The  writer  says  : 

“  Such  are  the  agricultural  achievements  of  slave  labor  ;  such  are  the  results  of  ‘  the  sum 
of  all  villanies.’  The  diabolical  institution  subsists  on  its  own  flesh.  At  one  time  children  are  sold 
to  procure  food  for  the  parents ;  at  another,  parents  are  sold  to  procure  food  for  the  children. 
Within  its  pestilential  atmosphere  nothing  succeeds  ;  progress  and  prosperity  are  unknown  ; 
inanition  and  slothfulness  ensue  ;  everything  becomes  dull,  dismal,  and  unprofitable ;  wretch¬ 
edness  and  desolation  stand  or  lie  in  bold  relief  throughout  the  land  ;  au  aspect  of  most 
melancholy  inactivity  and  dilapidation  broods  over  every  city  and  town  ;  ignorance  and  pre¬ 
judice  sit  enthroned  over  the  minds  of  the  people  ;  usurping  despots  wield  the  sceptre  of  power  ; 
everywhere  and  in  everything,  between  Delaware  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  are  the  multitudin¬ 
ous  evils  of  slavery  apparent.”  *  *  *  *  *  * 

“On  the  other  hand,  we  contend  that  many  years  of  continual  blushing  and  severe 
penance  would  not  suffice  to  cancel  or  annul  the  shame  and  disgrace  which  justly  attaches 
to  the  South  in  consequence  of  slavery — the  direst  evil  that  ever  befel  the  land  ;  that  the 
South  bears  nothing  like  even  a  respectable  approximation  to  the  North  in  navigation,  com¬ 
merce,  or  manufactures ;  and  that,  contrary  to  the  opinion  entertained  by  ninety-nine  hun¬ 
dredths  of  her  people,  she  is  far  behind  the  free  States  in  the  only  thing  of  which  she  has 
ever  dared  to  boast — agriculture.” 

“  The  great  revolutionary  movement  which  was  set  on  foot  in  Charlotte,  Mecklenburg 
county,  North  Carolina,  on  the  20th  day  of  May,  1775,  has  not  been  terminated,  nor  will  it 

be,  until  every  slave  in  the  United  States  is  freed  from  the  tyranny  of  its  master.  Every  victim 


11 


of  the  vile  institution,  whether  white  or  black,  must  be  re-invested  with  the  sacred  rights 
and  privileges  of  which  he  has  been  deprived  by  an  inhuman  oligarchy.”  *  * 

“  She  (the  South)  has  hugged  a  viper  to  her  breast.  Her  whole  system  has  been  para¬ 
lyzed  ;  her  conscience  is  seared ;  and,  still  holding  in  her  embrace  the  cause  of  her  shame  and 
suffering,  she  is  becoming  callous  to  every  principle  of  justice  and  humanity.”  *  * 

“In  this  extraordinary  crisis  of  affairs,  no  man  can  be  a  true  patriot  without  first  be¬ 
coming  an  abolitionist.”  *  *  *  *  * 

“  Henceforth,  sirs,  we  are  demandants,  not  supplicants.  We  demand  our  rights,  nothing 
more,  nothing  less.  It  is  for  you  to  decide  whether  we  are  to  have  justice  peaceably  or  by 
violence ;  for  whatever  consequences  may  follow ,  we  are  determined  to  have  it  one  way  or  the 
other.” 

“  Inscribed  on  the  banner  which  we  herewith  unfurl  to  the  world,  with  the  full  and  fixed 
determination  to  stand  by  it  or  die  by  it,  unless  one  of  more  virtuous  efficacy  shall  be  pre¬ 
sented,  are  the  mottoes  which,  in  substance,  embody  the  principles,  as  we  conceive,  that 
should  govern  us  in  our  patriotic  warfare  against  the  most  subtle  and  insidious  foe  that 
ever  menaced  the  inalienable  rights  and  liberties,  and  dearest  interests,  of  America  : 

“1.  Thorough  organization  and  independent  political  action  on  the  part  of  the  non¬ 
slaveholding  whites  of  the  South. 

“  2.  Ineligibility  of  pro-slavery  slaveholders ;  never  another  vote  to  any  one  who  ad¬ 
vocates  the  retention  and  perpetuation  of  human  slavery. 

“  3.  No  co-operation  with  pro-slavery  politicians;  no  fellowship  with  them  in  religion  ;  no 
affiliation  with  them  in  society. 

“4.  No  patronage  to  pro-slavery  merchants ;  no  guestship  in  slave- waiting  hotels ;  no  fees 
to  pro-slavery  lawyers;  no  employment  of  pro-slavery  pby  icians  ;  no  audience  to  pro¬ 
slavery  parsons. 

“5.  No  more  hiring  of  slaves  by  non-slaveholders. 

“  6.  Abrupt  discontinuance  of  subscription  to  pro  slavery  newspapers. 

“  7.  The  greatest  possible  encouragement  to  free,  white  labor.” 

The  foregoing  extracts  may  serve  as  a  sample  of  the  “  Anti-slavery  Bible” 
which  the  Hon.  Mr.  Burlingame  said  the  “  times  demanded.”  This  is  the  book 
which  the  Republican  leaders,  in  their  circular,  think  would  be  “  productive  of 
most  beneficial  results.”  This  is  the  book  of  which  the  Tribune,  27th  Decem¬ 
ber,  1859,  says: 

“Finally,  ignoring  a  few  harsh  epithets  and  questionable  theories,  and  overlooking  occa¬ 
sional  faults  of  style,  in  view  of  the  magnitude  of  the  theme,  the  ‘  Impending  Crisis  of  the 
South’  is  entitled  to  a  place  among  the  most  valuable  books  of  the  day.” 

In  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  this  book,  we  find  the  following  resolution 
adopted  at  a  public  meeting  in  the  town  of  Natick,  Massachusetts,  the  residence  of 
Senator  Wilson,  20th  November,  1859: 

“Whereas,  resistance  to  tyrants  is  obedience  to  God,  therefore — Resolved,  That  it  is  the 
right  and  duty  of  the  slaves  to  resist  their  masters;  and  it  is  the  right  and  duty  of  the  peo¬ 
ple  of  the  North  to  incite  slaves  to  resistance,  and  to  aid  them  in  it.” 

Mr.  Wilson  was  present  at  this  meeting,  and  did  not  raise  his  voice  in  opposi¬ 
tion  to  the  resolution. 

The  Helper  book,  bad  as  it  is,  is  not  more  pernicious  in  its  teachings  and  in¬ 
fluence  than  the  book  of  Mr  Lysander  Spooner,  entitled  the  “  Unconstitutionality 
of  Slavery,”  endorsed  by  W.  H.  Seward  and  other  Republicans.  Mr.  Seward, 
after  reading  it,  says,  it  is  a  “  very  able  work,”  and  wishes  that  “  it  might  be 
universally  studied.” 

This  book  of  Spooner  denies  that  slavery  had  any  legal  existence  in  the  country 
at  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  and  holds  that  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
makes  slavery  even  now  illegal. 

In  chapter  14,  the  writer  says  : 

“  Our  answer  to  this  argument  is,  that  at  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  there  was  no  legal  or  constitutional  slavery  in  the  States.  Not  a  single  State 
constitution  then  in  existence  recognized,  authorized,  or  sanctioned  slavery.  All  the 
slaveholding  then  practised  was  merely  a  private  crime,  committed  by  one  person  against  another, 
like  theft,  robbery,  or  murder .” 

“  Slavery  is  inconsistent  with  nearly  everything  that  is  either  expressed  or  legally 
implied  in  the  Constitution.” 


12 


“  This  illustration  is  sufficient  to  prove  that  the  power  of  the  General  Government  to 
liberate  men  from  slavery,  by  tbe  use  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  is  of  the  amplest  char¬ 
acter;  that  it  is  not  confined  to  the  cases  of  those  who  are  a  part  of  ‘  the  people  of  the 
United  States,’  and  so  parties  to  the  Constitution  ;  that  it  is  limited  only  by  the  territory 
of  the  country ;  and  that  it  exists  utterly  irrespective  of  ‘  anything  in  the  Constitution  or  laws 
of  any  Stated  ” 

“If  these  opinions  are  correct,  it  is  the  constitutional  duty  of  Congress  to  establish  courts , 
if  need  be,  in  every  county  and  township  even,  where  there  are  slaves  to  be  liberated;  to  provide 
attorneys  to  bring  the  cases  before  the  courts  ;  and  to  keep  a  standing  military  force,  if  need  be, 
to  sustain  the  proceedings. 

“  In  addition  to  the  use  of  the  habeas  corpus,  Congress  has  power  to  prohibit  the  slave- 
trade  between  the  States,  which  of  itself  would  do  much  towards  abolishing  slavery  in  the 
northern  slaveholding  States.  They  have  power,  also,  to  organize,  arm,  and  discipline  the 
slaves  as  militia  ;  thus  enabling  them  to  aid  in  obtaining  and  securing  their  ov:n  liberty .” 

Our  extracts  are  taken  from  the  New  York  Herald  of  24th  March,  1860. 
This  book  does  not  contain  the  violent  language  of  the  Helper  book,  but  is  even 
more  malign  and  insidious  in  its  attack  upon  the  Constitution  and  the  domestic 
peace  of  the  country. 

Read  the  following  from  the  speech  of  the  Hon.  Owen  Lovejoy,  a  prominent 
Republican  from  Illinois,  delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives  April  5, 1860  : 

“  Slaveholding  has  been  justly  designated  as  the  sum  of  all  villany.  Put  every  crime 
perpetrated  among  men  into  a  moral  crucible,  and  dissolve  and  combine  them  all,  and  the 
resultant  amalgam  is  slaveholding.  It  has  the  violence  of  robbery. 

“  A  member.  You  are  joking. 

“  Mr.  Lovejoy.  No,  sir,  I  am  speaking  in  dead  earnest,  before  God,  God’s  own  truth. 
It  has  the  violence  of  robbery,  the  blood  and  cruelty  of  piracy ;  it  has  the  offensive  and 
brutal  lusts  of  polygamy,  all  combined  and  concentrated  in  itself,  with  aggravations  that 
neither  one  of  these  crimes  ever  knew  or  dreamed  of. 

“Mr.  Chairman,  I  was  about  stating,  when  interrupted,  that,  the  principle  upon  which 
slaveholding  was  sought  to  be  justified  in  this  country  would,  if  carried  out  in  the  affairs 
of  the  universe,  transform  Jehovah,  the  Supreme,  into  an  infinite  Juggernaut,  rolling  the 
huge  wheels  of  his  omnipotence,  ankle-deep,  amid  the  crushed,  mangled,  and  bleeding 
bodies  of  human  beings,  [laughter  on  the  Democratic  side,]  on  the  ground  that  he  was 
infinitely  superior,  and  that  they  were  an  inferior  race.” 

Mr.  Lovejoy  is  a  parson,  and  is  a  great  favorite  on  the  Republican  side  of  the 
House.  His  speech  was  re-published  in  the  Tribune,  and  praised  for  its  “  terseness 
and  manly  vigor.”  He  is  a  warm  political  friend  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  of  course. 

On  24th  July,  1860,  Mr.  John  Hickman,  member  from  Pennsylvania,  said,  at 
Concert  Hall,  Philadelphia  : 

“  I  am  not  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  those  who  suppose  they  may  rightfully  make  merchan¬ 
dise  of  mothers  and  their  children,  seem  to  think  that  they  can  shape  the  designs  of  Provi¬ 
dence,  and  re-write  the  history  of  humanity,  reversing  everything  our  fathers  thought,  and 
for  the  maintenance  of  which  they  perilled  life  and  honor.’ 

The  Hon.  H.  C.  Leach,  from  Michigan,  on  14th  March,  1860,  said  in  the 
House  of  Representatives : 

“And  I  hesitate  not  to  say,  that  these  principles,  (of  the  Republicans,)  faithfully  ob¬ 
served  in  the  administration  of  government  affairs,  will  lead  to  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  to  the  repeal  or  essential  modification  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  law,  and  to 
the  limitation  of  slavery  to  the  States  in  which  it  now  exists.  If  these  resolutions  from 
the  Republican  platform  mean  anything,  they  mean  no  less  than  this.  And,  sir,  to  limit 
slavery  to  its  present  possessions*  is  to  destroy  it.  It  must  expand  or  die.” 

Hear  Senator  Wade,  of  Ohio,  on  the  Helper  book,  in  the  United  States  Senate, 
14th  December,  1859  : 

“  Now,  1  want  to  ask  the  Senator  if  there  is  anything  in  that  book  that  he  thinks  danger¬ 
ous  to  the  people  of  any  section  of  this  country  ?”  *  *  “  Why,  sir,  has  it  come  to  this, 

in  free  America,  that  there  must  be  a  censorship  of  the  press  instituted — that  a  man  cannot 
give  currency  to  a  book  containing  arguments  that  he  thinks  essentially  affect  the  rights 
of  whole  classes  of  the  free  population  of  this  nation?  I  hope  not,  and  I  believe  not.” 

Hear  Mr.  Van  Wyck,  of  New  York,  a  leading  Republican  of  the  present  House, 
on  7tli  March,  I860  : 


13 

“You  talk  of  God,  justice,  and  mercy,  who  hold,  claiming  by  Divine  authority,  four  mil* 
lion  of  human  beings  in  hopeless  and  irretrievable  bondage,  and  ostracize  free  white  men 
who  will  not  sing  hosannas  to  your  traffic  in  the  bodies  and  souls  of  men,  and  stigmatize  as  mur¬ 
derers  and  felons  those  who  will  not  applaud  the  cruelty  which  tramples  upon  all  the  attributes 
of  the  mind,  the  affections  of  the  heart,  given  by  the  Almighty  to  the  children  of  his  own  creation .” 

“  The  leprosy  of  slavery  is  ‘  in  the  warp  and  woof  of  your  organization.” 

We  shall  now  ask  your  attention,  fellow-citizens,  to  the  speech  of  Hon.  Charles 
Sumner,  delivered  in  the  United  States  Senate  on  4th  June,  1860.  Mr.  Sumner 
is  one  of  the  most  prominent  and  influential  Republican  leaders.  He  has  been 
twice  chosen  Senator,  and  is  a  warm  of  supporter  of  Abraham  Lincoln  for  the 
Presidency : 

“  Language  is  feeble  to  express  all  the  enormity  of  this  institution,  which  is  now  vaunted 
as  in  itself  a  form  of  civilization,  ennobling,  at  least,  to  the  master,  if  not  the  slave.  Look 
at  it  in  whatever  light  you  will,  and  it  is  always  the  scab — the  canker,  the  ‘  bare-bones,’ 
and  the  shame  of  the  country  ;  wrong,  not  merely  in  the  abstract,  as  is  often  admitted  by 
its  apologists,  but  wrong  in  the  concrete  also,  and  possessing  no  single  element  of  right.” 

“  Barbarous  in  origin  ;  barbarous  in  its  law  ;  barbarous  in  all  its  pretensions  ;  barbarous  in 
the  instruments  it  employs  ;  barbarous  in  consequences  ;  barbarous  in  spirit ;  barbarous 

wherever  it  shows  itself.  Slavery  must  breed  barbarians,  while  it  develops  everywhere  alike  in 
the  individual ,  and  in  the  society  of  which  he  forms  a  part,  the  essential  elements  of  barbarism .’> 

“  By  the  license  of  slavery,  a  whole  race  is  delivered  over  to  prostitution  and  concubi¬ 
nage,  without  the  protection  of  any  law.  Sir,  is  not  slavery  barbarous?” 

“  In  the  face  of  such  an  unutterable  abomination,  where  impiety,  cruelty,  brutality,  and 
robbery,  all  strive  for  mastery,  it  is  in  vain  to  assert  the  humanity  or  refinement  of  its  au¬ 
thors.”  *  *  “Cease,  then,  to  blazon  the  humanity  of  slave  masters.  Tell  me 

not  of  the  lenity  with  which  this  cruel  code  is  tempered  to  its  unhappy  subjects.  Tell  me 
not  of  the  sympathy  which  overflows  from  the  mansion  of  the  master  to  the  cabin  of  the 
slave.  In  vain  you  assert  such  ‘  happy  accidents.’  ” 

“  Violence,  brutality,  injustice,  barbarism,  must  be  reproduced  in  the  lives  of  all  who  live 
within  their  fatal  sphere.  The  meat  that  is  eaten  by  man  enters  into  and  becomes  a  part 
of  his  body  ;  the  madder  which  is  eaten  by  a  dog  changes  his  bones  to  red ;  and  the  slavery 

on  which  men  live,  in  all  its  fivefold  foulness,  must  become  a  part  of  themselves,  discoloring 
their  very  souls,  blotting  their  characters,  and  breaking  forth  in  moral  leprosy.  This  language  is 
strong ;  but  the  evidence  is  even  stronger.  Some  there  may  be  of  happy  natures,  like  honorable 
Senators,  who  can  thus  feed  and  not  be  harmed.  Mithridates  fed  on  poison,  and  lived ;  and  it 
may  be  there  is  a  moral  Mithridates,  who  can  swallow  without  bane,  the  poison  of  slavery.” 

Such  is  the  language  hurled  by  a  leading  Republican  from  the  United  States  Senate  at 
the  people  of  fifteen  States  of  this  Union!  No  Republican  Senator  rose  in  his  place  to 
enter  a  protest  against  the  tirade  of  indecency,  violence,  and  venomous  outpouring  of  per¬ 
sonal  and  party  malice  to  the  South  ;  but  all  of  them  by  their  silence  gave  it  their  acquies¬ 
cence  and  approval.  Indeed,  which  one  of  them  was  authorized  by  his  own  moderation  to 
cast  the  first  stone  at  Sumner. 

The  most  influential  personage  in  the  Chicago  Convention  which  nominated  Lincoln,  next 
to  Greely,  was  Joshua  R.  Giddings.  Hear  the  apostle  of  the  Republicans  on  the  subject 
of  a  forcible  resistance  to  the  fugitive  slave  law  at  Oberlin,  Ohio  : 

“  In  disregarding  the  law,  the  prisoners  did  right.  Their  error  consisted  in  sparing  the 
lives  of  the  slave  catchers.  Those  pirates  should  have  been  delivered  over  to  the  colored 
men  and  consigned  to  the  doom  of  pirates.  You  are  aware  that  this  is  the  doctrine  which  I 
proclaimed  in  Congress.  I  adhere  to  it.  Had  the  prisoners  executed  the  slave  catchers 
promptly,  it  would  have  taught  the  Administration  a  lesson  not  soon  to  be  forgotten.  We 
should  have  been  no  more  troubled  with  that  class  of  miscreants.  They  would  have  learned 
better  than  to  show  themselves  among  an  intelligent  people  who  know  their  rights,  and 
dare  maintain  them.” 

Well  might  Wendell  Phillips  deny  for  himself  and  friends  any  disposition  to  obey  laws 
except  when  it  suited  their  purposes.  He  said: 

“We  confess  that  we  intend  to  trample  under  foot  the  Constitution  of  this  country. 
Daniel  Webster  says:  ‘You  are  a  law-abiding  people.’  Shame  on  it,  if  this  be  true;  if 
even  the  religion  of  New  England  sinks  as  low  as  its  statute-book.  But  I  say  we  are  not  a 

law-abiding  community,  and  God  be  thanked  for  it.” 

The  Chicago  platform  declared  that  the  causes  which  called  the  Republican  party  into  ex¬ 
istence  “  are  permanent  in  their  nature.”  This  is  but  an  iteration  in  another  form  of  the 
“  irrepressible  conflict”  doctrine  previously  enunciated  by  Seward  and  Lincoln.  With  such 


14 


views,  and  led  on  by  Greely  (the  eulogist  of  John  Brown  and  Giddings,)  the  advocate  of 
forcible  resistance  to  the  fugitive  slave  law,  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  the  same  conven¬ 
tion  “  denying  the  authority  of  Congress,  of  a  Territorial  legislature,  or  of  any  individuals, 
to  give  legal  existence  to  slavery  in  any  Territory  of  the  United  States.”  The  obvious  aim 
of  such  a  declaration  is  to  encourage  forcible  interference  with  slave  property  in  the  Terri¬ 
tories,  and  to  incite  slaves  held  there  to  rebel  and  murder  their  masters. 

We  find  Mr.  Lincoln  reported  as  saying,  on  the  16th  July,  1858,  at  Chicago,  (see  New 
York  Herald  of  19th  May,  I860,)  as  follows: 

“  I  have  always  hated  slavery ,  I  think ,  as  much  as  any  Abolitionist.  I  have  been  an  Old 
Line  Whig.  I  have  always  hated  it,  and  I  always  believed  it  in  a  course  of  ultimate  extinc¬ 
tion.  If  I  were  in  Congress,  and  a  vote  should  come  up  on  a  question,  whether  slavery 
should  be  prohibited  in  a  new  Territory,  in  spite  of  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  I  would  vote 
that  it  should.” 

We  shall  now  quote  the  testimony  of  leading  Republican  journals  to  show  the  profligacy 
and  corruption  of  their  own  party.  In  nearly  every  State  where  they  have  had  power, 
corruption  has  followed  their  advent  to  office.  In  Wisconsin,  we  believe,  an  entire  legis¬ 
lature  was  found  to  have  been  bribed.  At  the  session  of  Congress  of  which  Banks  was 
Speaker,  three  or  four  Republicans  were  expelled  for  corruption — one  of  them,  Mr.  Mat- 
teson,  a  shining  light  of  their  party,  and  a  special  friend  of  W.  H.  Seward. 

Hear  the  Tribune’s  appeal  to  the  last  Republican  legislature  of  New  York,  begging 
them,  for  the  sake  of  the  party ,  to  be  moderate  in  their  rascalities: 

“  Messrs.  Republicans  in  the  legislature  !  Will  you  not  hear  the  cries  of  your  brethren 
in  this  ill-starred,  misgoverned  city?  *  *  But  if  you  turn  in  and  aggravate  their 

extortions — nay,  even  outdo  them  by  attempting  to  steal  yourselves  rich  out  of  the  confisca¬ 
tion  of  our  most  valuable  franchises,  what  can  we  do?”  *  *  “  If  integrity  and  a  sense  of 
decency  do  not  suffice  to  make  you  just  to  us,  be  entreated  not  to  ruin  the  cause  which  has  hon¬ 
ored  you.” 

This  appeal  passed  unheeded  by  the  chiefs  of  a  party  which  is  constantly  prating  of  God 
and  religion.  The  Tribune  said: 

“And  we  do  not  believe  it  possible  that  another  body  so  reckless,  not  merely  of  right, 
but  of  decency,  not  merely  corrupt,  but  shameless,  will  be  assembled  in  our  halls  of  legis¬ 
lation  within  the  next  ten  years.  ****** 

“  The  State  has  been  sold  out  by  a  portion  of  its  chosen  legislators,  and  they  have  clutched 
the  gold.  *  *  Look  at  the  bills  which  thus  passed,  and  the  bills  which  barely  failed,  and 

iudge  whether  legislation  so  manifestly  corrupt,  legislators  so  debauched  by  wholesale  bribery, 
were  ever  before  heard  of.” 

This,  too,  of  a  legislature  largely  Republican  in  both  branches.  But  hear  another  Re¬ 
publican  witness.  The  New  York  Evening  Post,  a  conspicuous  Republican  sheet,  says  of 
the  late  Republican  State  Convention  at  Syracuse : 

“Among  the  names  of  the  delegates  are  quite  too  many  of  those  men  who  have  figured 
in  some  way,  at  the  late  session  of  the  legislature,  in  the  iniquitous  proceedings  which  have 
justly  aroused  the  anger  of  all  honest  men.  The  list  of  delegates  from  the  districts  is  alto¬ 
gether  too  thickly  peppered  with  the  nauseous  names  of  those  who  were  concerned  in  the 
gridiron  railroad  and  other  schemes  of  pillage — names  the  very  sight  of  which  excites 
intense  disgust.” 

Is  this  a  specimen  of  the  boasted  reform  promised  to  us  by  the  Republicans  on  their 
accession  to  power?  “If  these  things  are  done  in  the  green  tree,  what  shall  be  done  in 
the  dry  ?” 

Hear  another  Republican  press,  the  Philadelphia  Inquirer,  upon  the  Pennsylvania  legis¬ 
lature  : 

“  Both  houses  of  the  legislature  have  adjourned,  and  for  that  one  act  we  tender  them  our 
hearty  thanks ;  for  never  in  the  history  of  Pennsylvania,  has  a  session  been  marked  by 
more  corrupt,  wicked  intriguing  than  the  present.  Every  good  citizen  feels  the  blush  of 
honest  indignation  tingling  his  cheeks  when  he  thinks  of  their  proceedings.  No  measure, 
however  beneficial,  could  stand  the  slightest  chance  of  passing,  unless  by  profuse  expendi¬ 
ture  of  money.  Almost  every  man,  with  some  noble  exceptions,  had  his  price,  and  if  com¬ 
mon  rumor  be  true,  it  was  an  enormous  price.  If  it  could  not  be  paid  in  the  hard  cash, 
secure  prospective  profits  were  just  as  good.” 

This  testimony  as  to  a  Republican  legislature  of  Pennsylvania  given  by  a  Republican 
press  of  that  State  is  copied  by  the  New  York  Times,  which  goes  on  to  say : 

“  Perhaps  our  own  legislators  at  Albany  may  be  gratified  to  read  what  is  likely  to  be  said 
of  them  whenever  they  shall  gratify  the  State  by  adjourning.  It  will  not  differ  much  in  its 


15 

general  tenor  from  the  preceding.  Public  opinion  is  very  nearly  unanimous  in  regard  to 
the  character  of  their  public  acts.” 

So  much  for  Republican  honesty  as  shown  up  by  their  own  organs! 

At  the  Republican  ratification  meeting  of  June,  1HG0,  to  ratify  Lincoln’s  nomination  held 
in  New  York,  Mr.  William  Evarts,  chairman  of  the  New  York  delegation  to  Chicago,  said  : 
“He  maintained  that  the  slave  trade  was  principally  maintained  in  the  city  of  New  York.” 

Yet  these  men  are  constantly  denouncing  the  South  for  an  alleged  desire  to  revive  this 
traffic ! 

The  origin  of  the  Republican  party  is  traced  by  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  a  conspicuous 
abolitionist,  and  author  of  the  sentiment  that  “  the  United  States’  Constitution  is  a  covenant 
with  death,  and  an  agreement  with  hell.”  In  Mr.  Garrison’s  speech  delivered  29th  May, 
1856,  we  have  shown  to  us  the  true  connection  of  the  Abolition  and  Republican  parties : 

“  I  come  now  to  the  Republican  party ;  and,  while  I  do  not  forget  its  actual  position  under 
the  Constitution  and  within  the  Union,  I  am  constrained  to  differ  in  judgment  from  some 
of  my  respected  friends  here  about  the  comparative  merits  of  that  party.  I  think  that  they 
do  not  always  accord  to  it  all  that  justice  demands ;  that  they  overlook  the  necessary  for¬ 
mation  of  such  a  party  as  the  result  of  our  moral  agitation  ;  and  I  marvel  that  they  do  not 
see  that  to  quarrel  with  it,  to  the  extent  they  are  doing,  is  to  quarrel  with  cause  and 
EFFECT - with  the  WORK  OF  OUR  OWN'  HANDS.” 

Mr.  Foster  asked  Garrison  :  “Do  you  believe  they  (the  Republicans)  can  succeed  ?” 

Mr.  Garrison.  “  Certainly  not.  But  that  is  not  the  question.  They  believe  they  can. 
They  laugh  at  my  incredulity,  because  I  do  not  believe  it.  I  think  that  ere  long  they  will 
be  satisfied  that  I  am  right,  and  that  they  have  been  deluded;  in  which  case,  I  expect  to 
hear  them  cry,  ‘Excelsior,  come  up  higher!’  and  to  see  many  of  them  take  up  their  posi¬ 
tion  under  the  banner  of  disunion.” 

“  I  have  said,  again  and  again,  that  in  proportion  to  the  growth  of  disunion  will  be  the 
growth  of  republicanism  or  freesoilism.  I  think  if  you  will  examine  the  map  of  Massachu¬ 
setts,  for  example,  you  will  find  this  to  hold  true  with  singular  uniformity — that  in  those 
places  where  there  are  the  most  abolitionists,  who  have  disfranchised  themselves  for  con¬ 
science  and  the  slave’s  sake,  the  heaviest  vote  is  thrown  for  the  freesoil  ticket.  This 
is  as  inevitable  as  the  law  of  gravitation.  The  greater  includes  the  less.  If  we  should 
begin  our  workover  again,  and  try  the  same  experiment  ten  thousand  times  over,  we  should 
have  the  same  result  in  the  formation  of  the  same  party.  Why,  then,  should  any  one  speak 
in  a  tone  of  despondency,  or  feel  that  our  cause  is  in  imminent  danger  of  being  wrecked  ? 
Is  this  to  take  a  philosophical  view  of  the  subject  ?  Such,  then,  is  my  judgment  of  the  Re¬ 
publican  party.” 

Fellow-citizens,  we  have  laid  before  yon,  not  the  sentiments  and  occasional 
heated  expressions  of  a  few  obscure  men,  but  the  repeated  declarations  and  avow¬ 
als  of  the  leading  orators,  statesmen,  and  presses  of  the  Republican  party.  In 
giving  }Tou  the  sentiments  of  Seward,  Wilson,  Sumner,  Greely,  Burlingame,  Gid- 
dings,  Webb,  Hale,  Lovejoy,  Hickman,  and  Van  Wick,  we  give  you  the  doctrines 
of  the  Republican  leaders — of  the  men  who  have  built  up  that  party,  who  give  it 
tone  and  direction,  and  who  would  surround  and  control  the  administration  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  if  through  your  neglect  he  should  be  chosen  to  the  Presi¬ 
dency.  We  have  not  spread  before  you  this  mass  of  venomous  hate  and  insult 
to  the  South,  of  defiance  for  the  laws,  and  contempt  for  the  Constitution,  of  com¬ 
pacts,  of  blasphemy  and  indecency,  without  an  object  which,  in  our  judgment, 
will  excuse  a  presentation  of  contents  so  disgusting  to  every  right-minded  and 
conservative  citizen.  We  want  you  to  know  these  men ;  to  mark  their  sectional¬ 
ism  ;  to  realize  the  perils  to  which  they  are  hurrying  the  country,  and  to  save  our 
beloved  land  from  the  scene  of  disunion  and  civil  war  they  are  ready  to  entail 
upon  us.  Ask  yourselves  whether  such  sentiments  can  be  carried  out  in  the 
administration  of  this  Government  ?  You  well  know  that  the  North  would  never 
tolerate  such  wrong  from  the  South,  if  the  latter  were  the  most  powerful  section 
of  the  Confederacy.  Reflect  that  sectionalism  is  disunion.  It  means  nothing 
else,  and  can  have  no  other  result.  It  was  well  said  by  Henry  Clay: 

“  The  abolitionists,  let  me  suppose,  succeed  in  their  present  aim  of  uniting  the  inhabit¬ 
ants  of  the  free  States  as  one  man  against  the  inhabitants  of  the  slave  States.  Union  on  one 
side  will  beget  union  on  the  other,  and  this  process  of  reciprocal  consolidation  will  be  at - 


16 


tended  with  all  the  violent  prejudices ,  embittered  passions,  and  implacable  animosities  which  ever 
degraded  or  deformed  human  nature.  Virtual  dissolution  of  the  Union  will  have  taken  place, 
whilst  the  forms  of  its  existence  remain.”  *  *  *  * 

“  One  section  will  stand  in  menacing  and  hostile  array  against  the  other.  The  collision 

of  opinion  will  soon  be  followed  by  the  clash  of  arms.” 

Fortunately,  there  is  yet  time  and  opportunity  to  avert  this  evil.  We  have 
shown  you,  in  the  language  and  address  of  the  Republicans,  the  bitter  hate  and 
denunciation  towards  the  South,  which  would  be  hardly  compatible  with  an  actual 
and  bloody  war  between  the  two  sections.  Day  by  day  this  process  of  alienation 
and  sectional  exasperation  goes  on.  Shall  it  be  permitted  to  do  its  work,  and 
consummate  its  purpose  to  reduce  the  South  to  the  lot  of  mere  subject  provinces 
in  a  union  formed  upon  a  basis  of  mutual  equality?  We  ask  you  to  give  your 
vote,  your  voice,  your  time,  and  best  energies,  to  crush  out  this  sectional  party. 
In  the  language  of  the  Father  of  his  Country  we  ask  you  “  to  frown  indignantly 
upon  the  first  dawning  of  any  attempt  to  alienate  any  portion  of  our  country  from 
the  rest,  or  to  enfeeble  the  sacred  ties  which  now  link  together  the  various  parts.” 
W e  ask  you  to  heed  the  admonition  of  him  who  led  our  fathers  through  the  perils 
of  the  revolution ;  where  the  blood  of  northern  and  southern  patriots  shed  upon 
the  same  field,  side  by  side,  watered  the  tree  of  American  liberty ;  and,  by  fol¬ 
lowing  his  patriotic  counsel,  to  repudiate  and  disown  the  teachings  and  platform 
of  a  sectional  party  who  wish  you  to  hate  your  brethren.  We  ask  you  now  to 
strike  a  blow  for  the  Union  which  shall  restore  peace  and  quiet  to  the  land,  and 
to  rebuke  the  conspirators  who,  marshalled  by  Lincoln,  are  seeking  to  subvert  the 
Constitution  bequeathed  to  you  by  your  fathers.  We  believe  that  you  will  do 
your  whole  duty,  and  that  there  is  yet  patriotism  enough  in  the  land  to  save  the 
Government  from  the  grasp  of  a  sectional  party.  It  remains  for  the  conservative 
men  of  the  North  to  prove  that  this  confidence  has  not  been  placed  in  vain. 


NATIONAL  DEMOCRATIC  EXECUTIVE  COMMITTEE. 

- - 

The  following-named  gentlemen  compose  this  Committee  : 

Hon.  I.  I.  STEVENS,  of  Oregon,  Chairman. 

Hon.  R.  W.  JOHNSON,  of  Arkansas. 

Hon.  JEFFERSON  DAVIS,  of  Mississippi. 

Hon.  JESSE  D.  BRIGHT,  of  Indiana. 

Hon.  THOMAS  B.  FLORENCE,  of  Pennsylvania. 

Hon.  GEORGE  W.  HUGHES,  of  Maryland. 

Hon.  JOHN  W.  STEVENSON,  of  Kentucky. 

Hon.  JOHN  R.  THOMSON,  of  New  Jersey. 

Hon.  A.  B.  MEEK,  of  Alabama. 

AUGUSTUS  SCHELL,  Esq.,  of  New  York. 

ISAAC  H.  WRIGHT,  Esq.,  of  Massachusetts. 

Hon.  JAMES  G.  BERRET,  of  Washington,  D.  C. 

WM.  FLINN,  Esq.,  of  Washington,  D.  C. 

WALTER  LENOX,  Esq.,  of  Washington,  D.  C. 

M.  W.  CLUSKEY,  Washington,  D.  C.,  Resident  Secretary. 

GEO.  W.  RIGGS,  Washington,  D.  C.,  Treasurer. 

All  communications  should  be  addressed  to  Hon.  ISAAC  I.  STEVENS,  Chairman, 
Washington,  D.  C.  Rooms  of  the  Committee,  at  No.  28,  4£  street. 


* 


McGill  &  Witherow,  Printers. 


